


Free Soloing

by viceindustrious



Category: Body of Lies (2008)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a nasty little voice in the back of his head that says: be calm. That says: Hani won't let you die here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free Soloing

Roger is skin deep in his own personal inferno, humidity clinging to his skin like napalm, a deadening cocoon of sweat and heat. There's the threat of rain in the air without any of the freshness, the promise of a thunderstorm that'll churn the dust to a choking wall. Through the door, Roger can't see the sky past the vast, gold ocean of the desert. The world is upside down. He doesn't know what time it is. What day it is. 

Rust has eaten a hundred creeping paths up the tin walls of the hut. A plague of blotches in brown and russet. Disease, fever, thirst. He's so thirsty. Every time he blinks the world starts to double, triple, swim out of his control. The patterns on the walls shift and crawl over his body. His skin is in sympathy with them, dirty like the shack, piebald with bruises. 

When the view outside is eclipsed suddenly by two dark figures, Roger rolls onto his back and the rope (something) tying his hands to the wall falls lax.

 _You're wasting your time.  
_  
He's sure he's said it, the words are loud enough in his head that it takes him a while to realize that his tongue is still stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wiggles it against his teeth and winces as one of them shifts, floods his mouth with the tang of warm iron. He can't remember what he was going to say. 

Roger ignores the voices. He was working on the rope, wasn't he? Trying to wiggle his hands out, maybe if he dislocated his thumbs...his hands feel like they're moving a little more freely now though, slippery, if he works up enough of a sweat that might help. Twist and turn, twist and turn, follow this yellow brick road to freedom. 

There's a nasty little voice in the back of his head that says:  _be calm_. That says:  _Hani won't let you die here._  

But didn't he know what he was getting into when he accepted Hani's offer? When Hani put him back out into the field? Does the fact that Hani pushed him up against the wall and kissed him a long, slow goodbye before he left (when, when, how long has he been out for?) change anything that matters here? That matters now?

It's not the syrup sweetness of figs on his tongue, or the soap and salt of Hani's skin, or the bitter richness of cigar smoke. 

A starburst of pain scatters along the side of his jaw, the friction burn of a rubber sole catching across his lips as he's kicked in the face. Something in his neck goes snap, crackle, pop, fucking insignificant kiddie level pain as his head skews to the side. The floor is cold against his cheek. Up close, his eyes can't help but focus and the sudden shift into clarity makes his stomach roll. 

 _Hani_ , he thinks. 

Someone grunts in arabic. "Fuck it, he's not going to give us anything."

The sharp mixed tang of ethanol and kerosene tickling his nose is not coming from some hallucination of a burning oil drum. The cancer sweet scent of ester, banana oil, has nothing to do with fruit. He drags his eyes up from the floor, gets as far as a pair of shoes and then squeezes them shut as the room starts to shift under him. He groans against the motion sickness pulling his guts apart. 

 _Hani_ , he thinks.  _Anytime now, Hani._

Like the man he wakes up next to is the same man who sent him out here. Like the line between The Job and Them isn't as sharp and final to Hani as the well pressed cut of his suits. Hani never explained it to him in as so many words, but that's because he's not a fucking child now, isn't it? 

Gun oil and solvents. Hani smells like that too sometimes. No touch of his cologne here though. 

Look to the left to remember, look to the right to lie. Roger's eyes roll back in his head. He starts to laugh and the next thing he knows is the bile in his throat as a boot stamps right down on his stomach. His laughter dissolves into whoops of pain, tears welling up in his eyes, but his mouth is turned up at the corners still. 

One of them's got a gun. Flash of steel, the bounce of the overhead lights on metal. Black hole of the barrel pointed straight at him.

 _Come on, Hani, you're cutting it a little close this-_


End file.
